Location: Nearly there
As we were sailing through our last full 24h of passage, we tried to get the most out of it that we can. Even if we haven’t smelled the land yet, it smells more and more like the end of this wonderful journey. There was a lot of conversation today about how we are gonna be able to tell our family about all this, and first of all, where to start ? “hum, hi! I’m alive,” or “yeah… well, we made it”. That sounds kind of unreal, and it is really difficult to try to explain how we are living on a passage since it has become so natural for us. So how to explain what we did today? I don’t know… Like usual?
Waking up in the middle of the night with the watch teams that had been together only for this particular passage and getting on deck for the briefing under the stars that blow our minds every single time we see themhaving some kind of meaningful conversations that are surprisingly deep for a 5 a.m. morning. Those ones are my favorites. The life-stories time, the questions to know each other better, the club night with music all around, and even watch team 3 rain dances, I’m gonna miss them so much. Yeah, even the rain dance, no matter what the other jealous watch teams think. We get also amazed by things such as adding two more fish to our fishing record just this morning: a spearfish and a barracuda.
Taking our traditional cold shower as we are always afraid of running out of water in the middle of soaping up… well, this one had made a victim today as we hear from the foxhole, a Jac in distress. While we were looking to fix the situation, he stayed there for 20 min singing Let it go. It was a pretty meaningful song since he was stuck in the “kingdom of isolation,” and “don’t let them in, don’t let them see” was also fitting perfectly.
Having classes in a rocking boat also seems to make sense for us as we are learning about pollution and conservation in our last marine bio class, as well as what I think to be the coolest leadership class we ever had. Was I the one giving it? Hum… maybe 😉 We finish all of this with our traditional squeeze, which is always my favorite part of the day. Even more, this one since Matt was having the hiccups all along! For the record, he sounded like a cute puppy who try to bark for the first time. Everybody was laughing, and it was, as always, an enjoyable moment. Now, as I am writing all of this in the chart house, I am hearing everybody enjoying their end of passage by singing while doing the cleanup.
Some days ago, when we were literally in the middle of nowhere, I would have told myself that I couldn’t do this anymore. But now, I would stay for another 20 days, and it is hard to think that it’s gonna comes to an end in just some hours from now. Our days are passing so fast that we sometimes forget to take time to appreciate the beauty of it and to realize that all of this is not what we can call a usual day and that we gonna, I hope, remember this for the rest of our days. Since a lot of us begin to realize all this, tears already start to fall… At least we didn’t run into any storm during this crossing. I guess the sandwiches would be for another time.
Mom, Dad, Pascale, and Catherine, as much as I miss you all, I will enjoy the last sprint as you would tell me to do.
Je m’ennuie et je vous aime